Monday 15 October 2007 11.30 EDT
First published on Monday 15 October 2007 11.30 EDT

In the second decade of the 20th century, the Ottoman Turks committed acts of brutal genocide against one and a half million Armenians. Every person who believes in human rights, and every organization committed to protecting them, should have no problem calling such genocide what it is.

But should the US Congress? The answer to that question should be no. Congress is neither an individual nor an organization; it is one of the major branches of the US government responsible for the foreign policy of the United States. In a democracy such as the United States, Congress is frequently asked to respond to all kinds of symbolic issues important to one particular group or another. Should Congress declare itself in favor of Christmas, as the late representative from Virginia, Jo Ann Davis, in 2005? Should it endorse the rights of states to display the Ten Commandments, as Missouri Republican Todd Akin similarly urged?

A resolution declaring the fact of the Armenian genocide is more serious than either of these, but it is still a symbolic gesture. Foreign policy should not be made by symbols. Congress would be just as wrong to pass a resolution declaring that the Armenian genocide never happened as it would insisting that it did.

Most symbolic resolutions do no harm. This one could. The Bush administration claims that the harm in question would be the dangers to which American troops in Iraq would be exposed if Turkey were, in protest against the resolution, to withdraw some of the support it has provided the American effort. Others, including the Anti-Defamation League, cite the harm to Israel that would follow if Turkey, about as close an ally in the Muslim world as Israel is ever likely to find, were to shift its allegiances. It is perfectly plausible to argue that while morality implies support of the genocide resolution, matters of state work against it.

But there is also a moral reason why passage of such a resolution is a bad idea. As horrific as the Armenian genocide was, it pales in comparison to what would happen if there really did take place a clash of civilizations between Islam and the Judeo-Christian West. No one knows whether such a clash will ever occur.

But there do exist voices in both the United States and Western Europe proclaiming that Islam - not Islamic terrorists, but Islam itself - is opposed to every value Westerners hold dear. In the writings of Norman Podhoretz, an advisor to presidential candidate Rudy Giuliani, the pride that Muslims have in their faith slips easily into a denunciation of their extremism, only to conclude with an account of the dangers they pose. For those willing to proclaim that even a secular Muslim such as Saddam Hussein was complicit in a terrorist attack against the United States, every religious Muslim government must be an even greater threat.

Anyone whose moral understanding leads them to recoil in horror at the idea of a religious war conducted in an age of nuclear weapons should want to encourage significant countries in the Muslim world to experiment with democracy, secularism and dynamic economic growth. No country has proven itself more willing to do that than Turkey.

It is true that the current Turkish government is more religious than its predecessors. But it is also true that it is a moderate government, anxious to continue on a path that would eventually lead Turkey into a closer relationship with the rest of Europe. (As it happens, in part because of its desire to become part of Europe, it is also the best government Turkey has had on the Armenian issue; Abdullah Gul, Turkey's president, has called, so far unsuccessfully, for changes in Article 301 of the Turkish penal code, which makes mention of the Armenian genocide a crime against Turkish identity.) We not only have a strategic interest in having Turkey as an ally. We have a moral interest in proving doomsday scenarios false.

I find myself totally out of sympathy with Turkey's intransigence on the Armenian genocide. But we need Turkey, and Turkey needs us. Americans of all stripes should continue to denounce the Turkish genocide against the Armenians while instructing their leaders to take a pass on making such sentiments official.